TigerFinder

Remember TigerFinder? If you don’t, get familiar: Last year some COS majors whipped up this thing that you download onto your computer that then sends out a signal to TigerFinder to let people you add as “Friends” on the thing know exactly where you are on a map of campus. And so we were all like, whoa, creepy!

Well guess what? Version 2.0 just came out, and it’s taking over Princeton. (Okay, not really, but a lot of people seem to be using it.)

USG Prez Yaroshefsky sent out an email earlier with a link to this USG blog post about the recent usage of the app, which shows some interesting graphs, like this one:

But, what exactly does this mean? Client usage? We just want to know: just who on campus is using TigerFinder, this creepiest of creepy Internet devices?

Using some intensely rigorous statistical analysis and IP tracing (read: Paint), we decided to break down just who’s adopted the thing, and when:

If Facebook’s “What’s on your mind?” and Twitter’s “What are you doing?” just aren’t doing it for your social broadcasting needs, then you might be happy to hear there’s a new way to let everyone be a voyeur of your life: TigerFinder!

Ever found yourself wishing you could let everyone know where you are every frickin’ second of the day? Now you can!

It’s simple: TigerFinder is a program you install on your computer to broadcast your position on campus to TigerFinder’s website. Other users can then see their friends’ locations (complete with latitude and longitude for the geographically inclined) on a map of campus.

In testing the service, we found that, yes, you can tell what part of Frist someone is in and, yes, it updates every two minutes just in case your target moves.

TigerFinder isn’t particularly groundbreaking, seeing how mobile social networking has even been scheduled to hit the iPhone soon. But its increasing popularity doesn’t detract from its… creepiness.